Thursday, August 11, 2011

Thursday day off and race thoughts.

Yesterday was my last solid ride and it felt amazing. My HR is super responsive which is a good thing... all systems are firing and ready to roll. I have a fairly high amount of anxiety at the moment but it's not about biking 100 miles. It's mostly about the first ~20 miles on Saturday where I'm going to need to stay out of trouble, something I'm not very good at. I'm excited to do something I've never done before though. After ~40 years I'm a "first timer" again. The last time I really felt like this was in 1997 as a completely unprepared first time Ironman guy at Hawaii. I had only done maybe 4 triathlons and had just quit smoking a little over a year prior. I had no idea what to do. I swam 1:06 (averaging 1 hour a week of swim training), biked 5:37 on an old road bike that was 2 sizes too big, no aero anything, and ran 3:07 having never run more than 20 miles at one time. 9:52 for my first Ironman which still stands as my slowest ever out of 15 Ironmans (which includes Ironman Wisconsin where I took a wrong turn and had to back track and ended up running 29 miles). Last year at the Leadville 100 run I averaged ~51 miles a week for the 18 weeks leading up to the run and tore my meniscus a month before. I take a great amount of comfort is remembering things like these.
My thoughts for Saturday are that if I stay positive then I have a great capacity for suffering and the last ~30 miles will be solely about that. Nutrition is not a concern, it's just a habit at this point. Not eating correctly would be weird. I have to be patient at the start and focus only on what I can control which is my effort and avoiding hitting the ground. Outside of a mechanical if I can put these things together I think I'll ride well. Anything under 9 hours will make me pleased and my gut it leaning heavily towards something in the 8:45 range which is probably where my fitness is right now.
Post race I have nothing planned outside of putting insulation under our kitchen floor and putting stone facade on our chimney... and fishing with my boys. But I did catch myself looking at last years Leadman results... I have a new found passion for mountain biking and running is still a passion too. Seems like a pretty good fit.

I'm excited to hear how it goes this weekend for you. But I'm going to predict you're being waaay too conservative on the 8:45. Maybe that's just your way of making sure you don't fall off your bike flying down powerline early on. But If I were betting I'd put my money on a sub 8 hour time.

Drafting is rarely a concern in a real XC MTB race, but is there some paved parts of the Leadville course where sitting the right place will save you a lot of energy, supposing your not in the front, pulling the bunch... Good luck with your race on Saturday, keep the rubber down! 8.48 would be a nice time...

Dave- Not at high altitude. The oxygen required to metabolize protein and fat "costs" too much. At altitudes above ~7800ft your body will shift to a glycogen heavy preference because it's the easiest nutrient to use. Plus there's a good chance of protein (and particularly fat) wrecking or shutting down your GI tract. Catabolism is minimal for a one time 9 hour event anyway. In training I think it is beneficial however. But each person is unique! For some it works and other's it doesn't. Me.. not so much. I'm bummed we didn't get a chance to have you over one last time!

Claus- Drafting is huge at Pb. The middle miles are flat to rolling. Putting my head down and time trialing is my thing. I hope to pass a few hundred people between mile 28 and 40... if no one wants to help then that's fine with me. But getting in to a fast group on those flats is useful.